Progress

My personal trainer has been working with me for about four months now - we meet every three weeks or so, which has felt like the right amount of time. She refreshes my workout plan, and then I execute the plan just long enough to feel comfortable with it and ... I do something else.

So what's the prognosis so far?

Pretty good I have to say. When I started, I was doing an indoor cycling class twice a week. Now I'm still doing that but adding two Lisa-designed workouts, and now that the weather is finally nice, I'm cycling once a week - if only to prepare for the 60km Ride for MS in mid-August.

So let's see... in four months I have...

• distinctly improved my overall fitness level.
  
• distinctly improved my posture.
• strengthened my back and abs (those core muscles you always hear about).
• almost doubled the weight I can lift/push/press/pull around the weight room.

One thing that has not been cooperative is the scale. While I've lost a little over twelve pounds so far, it's definitely been a case of three steps forward, two steps back. Averaged out, it's a little over half a pound a week. While I know logically that losing weight and more importantly, keeping it off, is a long and laborious process, emotionally it can get quite frustrating. And as someone whose reaction to stress or feeling blue is reaching for the munchies...

However, onward and upward - all progress is good! It's summer and fresh fruit and veggies about, and I'm getting enough sleep and sunshine to get me to the gym four times a week, and that's all very positive for me indeed.

My current workout, for anyone interested is...

• Three sets of 8 each on the rowing, chest press, and hamstring curl machines.
• Three sets of 12 each lunges with weights (front, back, and side), or 108 in all.
• Between all of those, in sets of three to coincide with above, crunches and obliques working out to about 115 crunches and 120 obliques all told.

In under an hour.

I'm looking forward to what Lisa has planned for me next time.